Antonio had displayed any of these undesirable traits as a child his father had been disappointed…he had looked at his son and shaken his head.
For Antonio, who had worshipped his father, a sound beating would have been infinitely preferable to that shake of the head.
Even allowing for the balancing strong female influence in his life, something of his father’s attitude had inevitably coloured his own behaviour. As an adult it never occurred to him to seek out a shoulder, not even a pretty one, to cry on when the going got tough. And he most certainly did not blurt out private and personal details to total strangers.
Until now.
‘You didn’t have any contact with her while she was growing up?’
He could hear the frost in her voice. ‘None at all.’ He’d already told this woman far too much; he wasn’t about to defend himself to her.
Lips compressed, Fleur turned her head and looked out the window. She didn’t know why she felt disappointed. It wasn’t as if the things she had read about him suggested he was big on family values. He was a selfish, hedonistic egotist and they didn’t generally make the best fathers in the world.
‘And you’re surprised she ran away?’ He ignored the child all her life and then on a whim decided he wanted to play at being father. What did he expect? she thought scornfully, turning back to look at him.
‘So you blame me? You think tonight was my fault?’
‘It’s really none of my business.’
‘Well, that hasn’t stopped you from expressing an opinion so far.’
The angry words burst from Fleur. ‘Well, I just think—’ She stopped and bit her lip. ‘Well, there’s more to being a father than DNA. It’s a title you have to earn—’ She stopped again and turned her head to the window. ‘Sorry, it’s not my business…I just think…I’m sure you don’t give a damn what I think…why would you?’
Why do I? He thought about the lies that had been printed about him, and his indifference to them, and asked himself again…why did he care about the opinion of an inquisitive female he had never set eyes an until today?
‘You sit there looking so smug and superior, thinking—’
‘You don’t know what I’m thinking,’ she protested.
‘You don’t think so? Try this!’ All the anger and frustration he had been feeling for the past week was in his eyes as without warning he pulled the car to the side of the road, brought it to a halt on the grass verge and switched off the engine.
It was a stretch of road without lights and they were immediately plunged into darkness. Fleur instinctively shrank back in her seat, her eyes widening as she heard the clasp of his belt click. He switched off the car headlights and they were immediately plunged into total inky blackness.
It was the sort of darkness that had texture.
Fleur shivered. Her eyes were wide, straining in the darkness. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear the sound of him breathing and feel his anger vibrating in the enclosed space.
The sound of his voice made her start.
‘You think that I’m a selfish absentee father who has just decided to play at families.’
As this was almost exactly what she was thinking Fleur remained silent. It didn’t seem wise to aggravate farther someone who, for all she knew, could be a dangerous maniac on his days off.
One thing she did know was that he definitely wasn’t the ice-cool character portrayed in those glossy magazines. She had begun to wonder if the authors of those pieces had ever even met him. If they had they could not possibly have missed the combustible quality that lay there just beneath the surface. She had been all too aware of it from the moment she had laid eyes on him.
Her stomach churned sickly with apprehension as she waited for him to speak.
‘That is a very eloquent silence.’
Her eyes had begun to adapt to the lack of light and she could make out his outline. It was large and threatening. ‘You’re scaring me.’
The silence that followed her breathy confession was heavy and oppressive. Then to her relief he clicked a switch and the interior of the plush car was filled with weak light.
A gusty sigh escaped her tight, aching throat.
He dragged a hand through his dark hair and looked at her pale face. ‘You scare easily.’
It might not be his fault that the pale light drew attention to the hard, chiselled angles of his face, making him look sinister and dangerous, but it was his fault that he had scared her witless.
‘No, I don’t,’ she retorted with feeling.
A grimace that might have suggested regret crossed his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, pressing his head deep into the leather head rest.
Sorry was a word she suspected didn’t cross his lips too frequently. She watched as he stared out the window. The thoughts he appeared lost in were, if his expression was any measure, pretty dark. ‘I didn’t know of her existence until now.’
‘Whose existence?’
A muscle alongside his mouth clenched as his head turned. His blue eyes found hers. ‘Tamara’s.’
Fleur grimaced in concentration and wrinkled her nose as she tried to follow what he was saying. ‘How could you not know you had a daughter?’
‘I did not know until last week that there was a Tamara. I didn’t know that Miranda was pregnant. My daughter and I are total strangers.’
He watched her almond-shaped eyes fly open and cursed under his breath. What was it about her, he wondered, that loosened his tongue?
‘Strangers?’ she echoed.
He nodded, reliving as he did so the moment he had been given the first glimpse of his daughter as she’d climbed out of the back seat of the Bentley. His trademark objectivity had been history.
She’s mine…
Fatherhood might be more than some matching strands of DNA, but in that moment what Antonio had felt had been nothing less than a connection.
However, whatever hope he might have held that Tamara also felt that connection had been quickly dashed. Not content with abandoning Tamara, her so-called father, Charles Finch, had obviously done a number on her. And Antonio was clearly the villain of the piece, the heartless man who was stealing her away from the only home she had ever known and a father who, or so he’d told her, would give anything to keep her. And so his daughter never looked at him with anything but hate in her eyes.
‘That’s…that’s…’
The past faded as beside him and very much in the present Fleur shook her head slowly from side to side.
‘That’s what she meant when she said you weren’t her real father?’
